Femke Bol

Femke Bol (born 23 February 2000) is a Dutch track and field athlete who competes in hurdling and sprinting. She specialises in the 400 metres hurdles, where she is the 2023 World Champion, and in the 400 metres, where she is the indoor world record holder. In the 4 × 400 metres relay, she is the 2023 World Champion with the Dutch women's team.
Bol holds the world record in the 400 metres indoor with a time of 49.26 seconds set on 19 February 2023, the European record in the 400 metres hurdles with a time of 51.45 seconds making her the second-fastest woman of all time in the event, and five Dutch records in individual events and relays. She also has world best performances in the 300 metres hurdles and 500 metres indoor.
She won two gold medals at the 2023 World Championships, was champion in the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Diamond League, and won a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She is also a four-time silver medalist at the world championships (outdoor and indoor), a seven-time gold medalist at the European championships (outdoor and indoor), and an eight-time medalist (four gold) at the Dutch championships (outdoor and indoor).
Bol's highest World Athletics Rankings were No. 1 in the 400 metres hurdles in 2021–2023, No. 3 in the 400 metres in 2023, and No. 2 of women overall in 2023. She was European Athletics Rising Star of the Year in 2021 and European Athlete of the Year in 2022 and 2023.
Early life and background
Femke Bol was born on 23 February 2000 in Amersfoort, Netherlands. She has an older brother. As a child, Bol practised judo for a year after she had broken her arm twice and her doctor had recommended the sport to help her learn how to fall.
Around 2008, she started practising athletics at a local club, following her brother who was already a member there. In an interview, Bol said about the sport: "It was always a way to clear your mind and just have fun and not think too much about other things. That's still what I like so much about it." In 2014, she transferred to another local club, AV Altis, where her coach discovered her talent for longer sprints.
Bol attended secondary school in Amersfoort, after which she became a student of communication sciences at Wageningen University. As of 2023, she was in a relationship with the Belgian pole vaulter Ben Broeders.
Youth and junior career
Bol focused on the 400 metres distance in 2015, at age 15, and started winning Dutch age-group competitions. She won five national youth titles in the 400 m (outdoor and indoor) between 2015 and 2017, and four junior titles in 2018 and 2019 (400 m outdoor, indoor, and hurdles). In 2016, she started training with coach Bram Peters at the athletics track of Ciko'66 in Arnhem, where her parents drove her almost daily.
At the international competitions, she progressed steadily. Competing against athletes up to two years her senior, Bol did not advance from the 400 m heats at the 2015 European Youth Olympic Festival in Tbilisi, Georgia. Two years later, the 17-year-old participated in the European Under-20 Championships held in Grosseto, Italy and reached the semi-finals of the event.
In 2019, her last year as a junior competitor, she claimed her first national title (indoor 400 m) in a senior competition. In June, in the third hurdles race of her life, Bol broke Dutch U20/U23 records and achieved World Championship qualifying standard when winning a meet in Geneva with a time of 55.94 s. In July, she won a gold medal in the 400 m hurdles at the European U20 Championships in Borås, Sweden. In September, she ran her first professional race at the Galà dei Castelli in Bellinzona, Switzerland. In October, at the Doha World Championships in Qatar, the 19-year-old reached the semi-finals with a new personal best of 55.32 s in the heats of the 400 m hurdles, becoming the second-fastest European U20 woman in history. She also helped her national women's team place seventh in the 4 × 400 m relay.
Since November 2019, she has been training at the Dutch National Sports Centre Papendal near Arnhem, coached by Switzerland's Laurent Meuwly and her previous coach Bram Peters as assistant coach.
Senior career
2020: First senior Dutch record and first senior successes
Bol was forced to train on gravel paths in the woods and on grass fields when COVID-19 quarantine measures were first enacted in March 2020. Despite this, she raced in Papendal in July and broke by almost a second the national 400 m hurdles record of 54.62 s set by Ester Goossens in 1998. First, running in the rain, she took almost a second off her 2019 best with a time of 54.47 s, which could not be ratified as only one other athlete competed. Two weeks later, she achieved 53.79 s, the fourth-fastest European under-23 time in history.
During this pandemic season, the Dutchwoman won all her following races over the barriers: two Diamond League events staged in 2020 as one-off exhibition competitions, and three Continental Tour events. First she stayed ahead of all her competitors in Székesfehérvár, Hungary on 19 August, to repeat this achievement four days later at the Stockholm Bauhaus-galan winning her first Diamond race. In September, she won in Ostrava (300 m hurdles), Bellinzona, and Rome. She reduced her open 400 metres pre-2020 best by 1.85 s down to 51.13 s.
2021: Tokyo Olympic bronze medallist
Bol started her unbeaten indoor campaign on 30 January, beating her previous best in the 400 metres by more than 1.5 s to break a Dutch record in a time of 50.96 s at the Vienna Indoor Track & Field meet in Austria. The previous record was set a few minutes earlier by Lieke Klaver, who in turn broke Ester Goossens' mark which had stood at 51.82 s since 1998. Bol then won all her following seven races at the distance in four events, improving in every final. Competing in the World Indoor Tour, she powered to meet records in Metz (50.81 s) and Toruń (50.66 s), then clocked 50.64 s at the Dutch Indoor Championships, and finally lowered her record to 50.63 s when winning at the European Indoor Championships in Toruń, Poland. She took there her second gold medal anchoring the women's 4 × 400 m relay to a championship record. Her individual mark made her the fastest European woman since 2009.
The 21-year-old started the 2021 outdoor season by competing at the World Athletics Relays to set a 400 m national record of 50.56 s on 29 May at the IFAM meeting in Oordegem. She then started improving her own Dutch hurdling record when winning Diamond League meetings, beginning with a time of 53.44 s on 10 June in Florence. At the time it was also European U23 record, breaking a 37-year-old mark. On 19 June, she returned to the 400 m flat event during the European Team Championships in Romania and bettered her record with a 50.37 s performance. On 1 July in Oslo, she lowered her hurdles record in a time of 53.33 s. She then took almost a second off with a Diamond League record of 52.37 s on 4 July in Stockholm, where she beat Shamier Little by 0.02 s. This race was only the second in history, after the 2017 USATF Championships, in which three women recorded times below 53 seconds as third-placed Anna Ryzhykova finished in 52.96 s. Bol, meanwhile, became the fourth fastest woman of all time with the sixth-fastest result ever, missing the European record by just 0.03 s. On 6 July, she won the event at the Continental Tour meet in Székesfehérvár with a time of 52.81 s, edging out Little in 52.85 s again. Having won the Diamond race in Gateshead, England on 13 July, she extended her unbeaten streak in her specialist event to 12 races in total. It was her third consecutive victory over Little, but this time Bol dominated, running away by about 10 metres.
At the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics in July and August 2021, Bol ran six 400 m races with hurdles and flat, including three under 50 seconds relay legs. In the 400 m hurdles final, Bol finished third after Sydney McLaughlin (51.46 s – world record) and Dalilah Muhammad (51.58 s – inside previous world record). With her time of 52.03 s, she broke the European record and became the third-fastest woman of all time at the event with the fourth-fastest result ever. It was the first ever Olympic medal for the Netherlands at the event. Before Bol's individual final on 4 August, she helped the mixed 4 × 400 m relay team set a national record in the final with her 49.74 s split, and later she anchored the women's 4 × 400 m relay to consecutive Dutch records in the heat and in the final, clocking splits of 49.14 s and 48.97 s respectively. On 8 August, she reached a 400 metres hurdles ranking of No. 1 in the World Athletics Rankings for the first time.
After the Games, in August and September, she continued her Diamond League dominance over the barriers, winning in Lausanne and the Zürich final with meet records of 53.05 s and 52.80 s respectively to claim her first Diamond trophy. At the former, she finished clear ahead of Shamier Little and Dalilah Muhammad, while in Zürich Bol held off Little again. Having skipped the USA's event in Eugene and ran 400 m flat in Paris (50.59 s, 4th), she remained unbeaten in the Diamond race with six wins out of six races. While still in Switzerland, on 14 September, she ended her breakthrough season with another meet record in Bellinzona, staying unbeaten in 11 of her 12 hurdles races in 2021.
In 2021, Bol gradually improved her personal bests, setting eleven national records with five more as a member of relay teams. Bol also set a Diamond League record, three Diamond League circuit's meet records, and five meet records at the World Athletics Indoor Tour and Continental Tour events. She broke the 53-second barrier in the 400 m hurdles four times that season, had an individual win-loss record of 16–4, and was voted European Athletics Rising Star of the Year.
2022: World indoor and outdoor silver medallist and triple European champion
Bol opened her indoor season returning to Metz, France, where she bested her previous meeting record in the 400 m (50.72 s), and also won her 200 metres heat with a new personal best (23.37 s). Then she returned to Toruń, Poland, to beat her local meet record again (50.64 s). On 27 February, at the Dutch Indoor Championships, she improved her own national record with a 50.30 s clocking which was also faster than her outdoor best, and putting her 12th on the world indoor all-time list. At the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade about three weeks later, Bol won the silver medal, after she fell at the finish line during the semi-finals, in a time of 50.57 s behind Miller-Uibo who ran 50.31 s. Bol also anchored the Dutch women's 4 × 400 m relay to silver thanks to her closing surge from fourth into second, with the fastest split of the race of 50.26 s.
The 22-year-old started her outdoor season on 31 May at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava, where she ran a world best over the 300 m hurdles. She clocked a time of 36.86 s, which was 1.3 s faster than the previous best set by Zuzana Hejnová in 2013. She continued with Diamond League wins in Rome, Oslo, and Stockholm, breaking a meet record in Oslo before posting 52.27 s in Stockholm to improve her own Diamond League record with 0.10 s which she set the previous year.
At the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon in July, Bol first ran the final leg of the mixed 4 × 400 m relay. After taking the baton a distant third, she anchored the Dutch team to a silver and a national record thanks to her split of 48.95 s, the second-fastest female split of the entire race. In the 400 m hurdles, she equalled her season's best (52.27 s) to finish behind McLaughlin (who lowered her world record to 50.68 s) and ahead of Muhammad in third (53.13 s). The Dutch women's 4 × 400 m squad lost the baton in the heats and was disqualified despite a qualifying position. After the championships in August, she broke for the first time the 50-second barrier in the 400 m flat and set a national and meet record with a time of 49.75 s at the Silesia Diamond League.
The same month, she completed the gold hat-trick at the European Championships in Munich, becoming the first female sprinter to complete a 400 m double at a major championships as she won one-lap events both with and without hurdles. Her time for the open 400 m of 49.44 s was the fastest at a Europeans since Stuttgart 1986 and a new national record, while over the barriers Bol set a championship record. She rounded off her Munich campaign by producing a 48.52 s anchor leg to land the Netherlands gold and a national record in the 4 × 400 m relay, moving from third to first around the final bend; their result was also the fastest at a Europeans since 1986. Bol became only the second Dutch athlete after Fanny Blankers-Koen in 1950 to win three gold medals at the event.
In her return to the Diamond League, Bol set another meet record over the barriers in Lausanne, and then concluded her third senior season with a victory at the Zürich final, successfully defending her Diamond League title. She achieved six marks under 53 seconds that year, staying unbeaten in 11 out of her 12 hurdles races, posted an individual win-loss record of 13–4, and was crowned European Female Athlete of the Year.
2023: World indoor 400 m record and double world champion
On 4 February, Bol improved by nearly 0.7 s the indoor world best performance in the less frequently run distance of 500 metres with 1:05.63 min, also faster than the outdoor record (1:05.9 min), at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston, USA. Competing again in Metz, France, she set new Dutch indoor records in both the 200 m and 400 m. Bol clocked a lifetime best in the former (22.87 s), and was the fourth woman in history to break the 50-second barrier with 49.96 s in the latter. She next triumphed with a meet record in Liévin (50.20 s).
On 19 February at the Dutch Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn, she sliced 0.7 s off her best with a landmark 49.26 s, breaking the longest-standing world record in a track race. This was at the time the 49.59 s indoor 400 m record, set by Jarmila Kratochvílová back in 1982. After setting an outright lifetime best, Bol said, "this was almost a perfect race".
She capped her record-breaking indoor campaign by successfully defending her European 400 m title at Istanbul 2023 with the third mark under 50 seconds in the that season (49.85 s), a global record. She added her seventh European title anchoring the Netherlands to a 4 × 400 m relay victory with a new Dutch and championship record, making them the third-fastest national women's team in history.
Training for the 2023 outdoor season, Bol practiced a different stride pattern for the 400 m hurdles in an effort to become faster. Previously, she took fifteen steps between the hurdles throughout the race, which meant she could jump over each hurdle with the same leg leading. Now, she tried out fourteen steps between the first few hurdles, which made her alternate between her legs for the jump, only to change it to fifteen steps for the last hurdles. Bol tried this new setup in competition for the first time in Oordegem, Belgium on 27 May, where she ran sixteen steps after hurdle seven instead of fifteen and nonetheless set a world lead of 53.12 s. Bol continued to win three Diamond League races over hurdles in Rome, Oslo, and Lausanne, setting meet records in all three of them.
On 23 July, Bol made her first ever appearance at the London Diamond League. After leading from the first barrier, Bol continued to widen her lead throughout the entire race. At the finish line, she stopped the clock at a time of 51.45 s, which was a 0.58 s improvement of her personal best in the 400 hurdles. With her performance in London, Bol became the third woman in history to run the 400 metres hurdles under 52 seconds. Her time of 51.45 s was the third-fastest time ever and made her the second-fastest woman of all time, as only world record holder McLaughlin-Levrone had run faster. This time also further lowered her own European and Diamond League records. On 25 July, she reached a women's overall ranking of No. 2 in the World Athletics Rankings for the first time, with only Faith Kipyegon ranking higher.
On 19 August, during the 4 × 400 m mixed relay at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Bol fell within metres of the finish line, while vying with Alexis Holmes of the USA for first place. Landing face first, Bol lost the relay baton over the finish line, making it impossible for the Netherlands team to legitimately finish the race and resulting in a DNF. On 24 August, she gained her first world title when she won the final of the 400 m hurdles in 51.70 s. She then continued her success on 27 August with her anchor leg in the women's 4 × 400 metres relay, passing Nicole Yeargin of Great Britain and Stacey-Ann Williams of Jamaica shortly before the finish line, earning her a second gold medal at these World Championships, together with team members Eveline Saalberg, Lieke Klaver, and Cathelijn Peeters.
After the world championships, Bol won her 400 metres hurdles races at the Galà dei Castelli in Bellinzona, Memorial Van Damme in Brussels, and Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, setting meeting records on all three occasions and becoming the 2023 Diamond League champion in 51.98 s, her third time under 52 seconds of the season, on 17 September. In 2023, Bol won all of her twenty individual 400 m flat and hurdles races and became European Athlete of the Year for a second time.
Personal bests
Information from her World Athletics profile unless otherwise noted.
Individual events
Season's bests
Key:
Team events
Competition results
Information from her World Athletics profile unless otherwise noted.
World Athletics Rankings
Key:
International competitions
Circuit wins and titles
Diamond League
400 metres hurdles champion (3): 2021, 2022, 2023
400 metres hurdles wins, other events and times (in seconds) specified in parentheses:
2020 (2): Stockholm Bauhaus-Galan (54.68), Rome Golden Gala (53.90)
2021 (6): Rome Golden Gala in Florence (53.44 ), Oslo Bislett Games (53.33 ), Stockholm (52.37 ), Gateshead British Grand Prix (53.24), Lausanne Athletissima (53.05 ), Zürich Weltklasse (52.80 )
2022 (6): Rome (53.02 ), Oslo (52.61 ), Stockholm (52.27 ), Chorzów Kamila Skolimowska Memorial (400 m, 49.75 ), Lausanne (52.95 ), Zürich (53.03)
2023 (6): Rome Golden Gala in Florence (52.43 ), Oslo (52.30 ), Lausanne (52.76 ), London (51.45 ), Brussels Memorial Van Damme (52.11 ), Eugene Prefontaine Classic (51.98 )
World Athletics Continental Tour
400 metres hurdles wins, other events and times (in seconds) specified in parentheses:
2020 (3): Székesfehérvár Memorial (54.67), Ostrava Golden Spike (300 mH, 38.55 ), Bellinzona Galà dei Castelli (54.33)
2021 (3): Hengelo FBK Games (54.33 ), Székesfehérvár (52.81 ), Bellinzona (54.01 )
2022 (2): Ostrava (300 mH, 36.86 ), Hengelo (53.94 )
2023 (3): Oordegem International Flanders Athletics Meeting (53.12 ), Hengelo (400 m, 50.11 ), Bellinzona (52.79 )
World Athletics Indoor Tour
400 metres indoor wins, other events and times (in seconds or minutes:seconds) specified in parentheses:
2020 (1): Metz Meeting Moselle Athlélor (52.47 )
2021 (2): Metz (50.81 ), Toruń Copernicus Cup (50.66 )
2022 (2): Metz (50.72 ), Toruń (50.64 )
2023 (4): Boston New Balance Indoor Grand Prix (500 m, 1:05.63 ), Metz (49.96 ) & (200 m, 22.87 ), Liévin Meeting Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais (50.20 )
National championships
Recognition
2020
European Athlete of the Month for September 2020 of the European Athletic Association
2021
European Athlete of the Month for June 2021 of the European Athletic Association
European Athletics Rising Star of the Year of the European Athletic Association
2022
European Athlete of the Month for June 2022 of the European Athletic Association
Honorary Membership of AV Altis
Sports Medal of the City of Amersfoort
European Athlete of the Year of the European Athletic Association
Dutch Athlete of the Year of the Royal Dutch Athletics Federation
Dutch Sports Team of the Year of the NOC*NSF: women's 4 × 400 metres relay (shared with Andrea Bouma, Lieke Klaver, Eveline Saalberg, Laura de Witte, and Lisanne de Witte)
2023
Membership of Merit of the Royal Dutch Athletics Federation
European Athlete of the Year of the European Athletic Association
Notes
References
External links
2000 births
21st-century Dutch women
Athletes (track and field) at the 2020 Summer Olympics
Athletes (track and field) at the 2023 European Games
Diamond League winners
Dutch female hurdlers
Dutch female sprinters
Dutch Indoor Athletics Championships winners
European Athlete of the Year winners
European Athletics Championships winners
European Athletics Indoor Championships winners
European Athletics Rising Star of the Year winners
European Championships (multi-sport event) gold medalists
European Games gold medalists for the Netherlands
European Games medalists in athletics
Living people
Medalists at the 2020 Summer Olympics
Olympic athletes for the Netherlands
Olympic bronze medalists for the Netherlands
Olympic bronze medalists in athletics (track and field)
Olympic female hurdlers
Olympic female sprinters
Sportspeople from Amersfoort
World Athletics Championships athletes for the Netherlands
World Athletics Championships medalists
World Athletics Championships winners
World Athletics Indoor Championships medalists
World Athletics indoor record holders